1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable cellular phone system, and a portable cellular phone terminal device and an information transmitting center used in the same portable cellular phone system.
The present application claims priority of Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-261956 filed on Sep. 9, 2004, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a portable cellular phone terminal device has been provided with expensive accessory functions such as a camera or a TV tuner. For example, a camera performance of a camera-attached portable cellular phone terminal device has improved remarkably, so as to be almost equal to that of an ordinary digital camera. Further, ease-to-use of the other functions has also improved, so that the accessory functions of the portable cellular phone terminal device other than communication functions are highly evaluated in utilization.
Conventionally, portable cellular phone terminal device providers have employed an approach to get subscribers by providing a portable cellular phone terminal device more inexpensive than its prime cost. After selling the inexpensive portable cellular phone terminal device to the subscribers, the portable cellular phone terminal device providers expect to collect a difference by a charge for utilizing the portable cellular phone terminal device or a like. However, if the user buys a portable cellular phone terminal device from a portable cellular phone service provider and immediately cancels a contract of portable cellular phone services in order to utilize accessory functions of the portable cellular phone terminal device, the portable cellular phone terminal device provider cannot collect a difference due to inexpensive selling of the portable cellular phone terminal device. Conventionally, even if the subscriber who bought a portable cellular phone terminal device inexpensively has cancelled a contract of portable cellular phone services, he can still have the portable cellular phone terminal device and use its accessory functions.
As described above, as accessory functions of a portable cellular phone terminal device are improved, it has been concerned that more and more users would buy a portable cellular phone terminal device from a portable cellular phone terminal device provider and immediately cancel the contract in order to utilize the accessory functions. Therefore, there is a need for such a system as to suppress such users from increasing.
Patent Literature 1 describes such a configuration that in a communication terminal, processing to perform a predetermined function other than wireless communication is restricted if registration processing about communication is yet to be performed. In this description, the registration processing refers to registering predetermined identification data in the portable cellular phone terminal device beforehand.    Patent Literature: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-313695
Although a system is necessary for suppressing an increase in number of users who would temporarily subscribe a contract of portable cellular phone services and buy a portable cellular phone terminal device inexpensively in order to utilize an accessory function of the portable cellular phone terminal device as described above, if the accessory function of the portable cellular phone terminal device, which is owned by the user, cannot be used in a case where the subscriber has cancelled the contract of the portable cellular phone services, its utility will decrease remarkably.